Atlanta’s Startup Community Gets New Tech Village in Buckhead

In the past few weeks, Pardot’s co-founder, David Cummings, purchased Ivy Place — the circa 1986, hedge-fundy-looking building at the corner of Lenox Road and Piedmont Road. It aptly has large, white letters spelling out “The Private Bank,” twice, on each corner of the building overlooking Buckhead.

In an inexplicable turn of events, a building architected for private wealth managers, investment bankers and multi-generational law firms is now about to be overrun with some of Atlanta’s most ambitious entrepreneurs. Any doubters should look no further than the Twitter stream of Atlanta Tech Village tenant @Urvaksh — the personable Atlanta Business Chronicle writer (scoop master) whose snark is masked by his authentic jollity towards life and his otherwise-hard-to-find information (send scoops his way).

Ivy Place transitioning to the Atlanta Tech Village is more than just a change in name. The dichotomy of young, ambitious tech entrepreneurs versus the traditional corporate types is a cultural clash that can only be compared to the scene of the opening resident party at The Mansion on Peachtree, where Atlanta’s most successful hip-hop artists shared drinks with the city’s old-money establishment.

Buckhead is known to most as Atlanta’s most affluent neighborhood. The Ritz, the St. Regis, our city’s best steakhouses are all within a mile or two of the Atlanta Tech Village. Wait, what? It would make more sense to put a Racquet Club in old Ivy Place than it would to put a Tech Village.

Or would it?

In the summer of 2009 when Kasim Reed and City Council President Lisa Borders were battling each other in the race for mayor, they both kept using a similar line, stump speech after stump speech. “Real estate is to Atlanta what finance is to New York.” It’s the backbone of commerce in our city. Unquestionably, it’s true.

Of course, even novelist Tom Wolfe nailed the depiction of Atlanta through an aging real estate tycoon who is willing to bet the farm, actually plantation, on one real estate deal after another.

Constructing a building doesn’t put people in them. Jobs do. Jobs from entrepreneurs who create a product, take it to market, and scale it…